CH> There's nothing like having the freedom of the road and the comforts
 CH> of home. But $5 gas is pushing the fantasy of comfortable vagabondage
 CH> to the wall.

 CH> By Garrison Keillor

 CH> Jun. 18, 2008 | Eighty-six percent of the American people believe the
 CH> price of gasoline will climb to five bucks a gallon this year, a big
 CH> shift in public opinion from a year ago when most people felt that
 CH> oil prices were spiking high and would soon return to normal -- which
 CH> is 35 cents a gallon, same as a pack of smokes -- and we'd be able to
 CH> head west in our Winnebagos for a nice summer vacation.

 RW> Faceteous statement noted.


 Hi Roy. Good. I did a Gooogle recenlty. One hit was " ARE there any
cities without subburbs? I think only thoe very old ones. Vancouver BC
is like the city described where you can just walk out your door and a
few blocks away there's a coffee shop, a bakery, a farmer's market...
ah.news stand... and in the other direction , the beach. :)

........


 CH> This does not appear to be in the cards and Winnebago stock has
 CH> fallen about 50 percent in the past year. If you are selling a big
 CH> box on a truck chassis for as much as a quarter-million dollars when
 CH> gas is at $4 and rising, you are aiming at a rather select clientele
 CH> indeed, folks who might rather buy a beach house in Costa Rica than
 CH> go cruising the Interstate.

 RW> The beach house sounds like a good idea we can all appreciate.

 Most definitly!


 CH> Nonetheless it's sad to see the motor home fade into the sunset. I
 CH> used to despise them when I was a canoeist, of course. You paddle up
 CH> to a campground at the end of a hard day and see a few R.V.s parked
 CH> there, the air conditioners rumbling, the flickering blue light of
 CH> the TVs in the windows, and as you set up your tent as far from them
 CH> as possible, you feel a moral grandeur purer than you will ever feel
 CH> again. A holy Christian pilgrim among the piggish heathen.

 RW> He should travel the 13 miles of the Guadalupe River here in Texas. I
 RW> service those 13 miles and see the mix of tents among RVs on a daily
 RW> basis during the summer. It seems that the pending $5/gallon of gas
 RW> doesn't

 Ah Texas. You can drive 12 hours in almost any direction from DFW or
the center and still be in Texas. ((PS: I'm speaking figuratively so
don't go getting precise on me just now.))

 You know now that I am back in Florida I actually
appreciate Texas. Right now I can say gee it's really warm no hot,
today but it's hotter in Texas. And this coming winter I can say, gee
its nippy today but it's COLDER in Texas. There.


 RW> impede their camping one bit. The river campgrounds are crowded early
 RW> in the year with reservations being made last October when the
 RW> campgrounds closed for the winter.

 How was that in August of 06 btw. I have a picture of a sign near a
dried riverbed that says, "NO Swimming". Seriously the lakes in the
DFW area went down quite a bit! Bad for the tourism trade.
................

 CH> The fantasy of comfortable vagabondage lies deep within each one of
 CH> us, though, and once, 30 years ago, driving a GMC motor home around
 CH> western Minnesota, I fell under the spell. To have the freedom of the
 CH> road and the comforts of home -- your own books on the shelf, your
 CH> clothes in a drawer, your brand of beer in the fridge -- is an
 CH> aristocratic privilege and I was happy to give up moral grandeur for
 CH> a couple weeks and enjoy it.

 RW> Hmmmm. Did he rent or own?

 No idea. I bet he rented though. Just a hunch.

 CH> Five-dollar gasoline is pushing that fantasy to the wall, and it's
 CH> also showing most of us that we live in communities whose design is
 CH> based on the assumption of cheap gasoline -- big lots with backyard
 CH> privacy make for a long drive to the grocery store.

 RW> There are only two grocery stores in this town. Both are across town
 RW> where the lots and the backyards are big. On those lots are big houses
 RW> where the richer than I am live. Mine isn't a small lot either.

 WOW! I like that. If we move to one of satilites of Orlando that is
how it is there too. Small town. Big yards. Mature landscape.

.......

 CH> In the big old-fashioned city neighborhood, if you're bored in the
 CH> evening you just stroll out the door and there, within five or 10
 CH> minutes, are a newsstand, a diner, a movie theater, a palm reader, a
 CH> tavern with a bartender named Joe, whatever you're looking for.

 RW> All that's right across the freeway from here. Unfortunately, you
 RW> can't get there from here.

 A boat? Would you like them in a boat? Sam I am.

 Vancovuer, BC is like that...  beautiful city...
.....
 CH> But in the sort of neighborhood most Americans prefer, there are only
 CH> a lot of houses like yours and residents who give evening pedestrians
 CH> the hairy eyeball. The mall is a long hike away and it's an amalgam
 CH> of chain outlets, with a vast parking lot around it. To a person
 CH> approaching on foot, it feels like an enemy fortress.

 RW> That's the one on the other side of town.

 I love to walk. It is odd though how some people find walking odd.
Excpet at the mall of course.

......


 CH> So we will need to amuse ourselves in new ways. I predict that banjo
 CH> sales will pick up. The screened porch will come back in style. And
 CH> the art of storytelling will burgeon along with it. Stories are
 CH> common currency in life but only to people on foot. Nobody ever told
 CH> a story to a clerk at a drive-up window, but you can walk up to the
 CH> lady at the check-out counter and make small talk and she might tell
 CH> you, as a woman told me the other day as she rang up my groceries,
 CH> that she had gotten a puppy that day to replace the old dog who had
 CH> to be put down a month ago, and right there was a little exchange of
 CH> humanity. Her willingness to tell me that made her real to me. People
 CH> who aren't real to each other are dangerous to each other. Stories
 CH> give us the simple empathy that is the basis of the Golden Rule,
 CH> which is the basis of civilized society.

 RW> I get those stories everyday. Idle conversation as I fill out the
 RW> paperwork before unlocking someone's car or pickup. Do you know how
 RW> long it takes to put 2 gallons of gas into a car from a gas can?
 RW> That's a two story job.

 Aww.. I'd love to hear those stories Roy. What are you doing
unlocking someones car. They idle like that out of embarassment for
having left their keys in the car?

....

 CH> So when gas passes $5 and heads for $8 and $10, we will learn to sit
 CH> in dim light with our loved ones and talk about hunting and fishing
 CH> adventures, about war and romance and times of consummate foolishness
 CH> when we threw caution to the wind and flung ourselves over the Cliffs
 CH> of Desire and did not land on the Sharp Rocks of Regret.

 RW> He's probably never stumbled over the dirty diaper pail in the night.

 LOL! Probally not! Did you?

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